The next U.S. president will need to pursue a new strategic framework for advancing American interests in the Middle East. The mounting challenges include sectarian conflict in Iraq, Iran's pursuit of nuclear capabilities, failing Palestinian and Lebanese governments, a dormant peace process, and the ongoing war against terror. Compounding these challenges is a growing hostility toward U.S. involvement in the Middle East. The old policy paradigms, whether President George W. Bush's model of regime change and democratization or President Bill Clinton's model of peacemaking and containment, will no longer suit the likely circumstances confronting the next administration in the Middle East.In "Restoring the Balance", experts from the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution and from the Council on Foreign Relations propose a new, nonpartisan strategy drawing on the lessons of past failures to address both the short-term and long-term challenges to U.S. interests. Following an overview chapter by Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Martin Indyk, director of the Saban Center, individual chapters address the Arab-Israeli conflict, counterterrorism, Iran, Iraq, political and economic development, and nuclear proliferation. Specific policy recommendations stem from in-depth research and extensive dialogue with individuals in government, media, academia, and the private sector throughout the region.The experts include Stephen Biddle, Isobel Coleman, Steven A. Cook, Steven Simon, and Ray Takeyh from the Council on Foreign Relations and Daniel L. Byman, Suzanne Maloney, Kenneth M. Pollack, Bruce Riedel, ShibleyTelhami, andTamara CofmanWittes from Brookings' Saban Center.

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Richard N. Haass, Martin S. Indyk - Restoring the Balance, A Middle East Strategy for the Next Presi dent (2008).djvu

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Osprey - Fortress 58 - Randy E.M. Foster - Vietnam Firebases 1965-73, American and Australian Forces (2007).jpg

USA Books1 - Osprey - Fortress 58 - Randy E.M. Foster - Vietnam Fi...irebases 1965-73, American and Australian Forces 2007.jpg

Impressive in terms of scale and structure, the Fire Support Base became a dominant element in ground maneuver during the Vietnam War. Initially a mobile base, it soon evolved into a semi-permanent and more sophisticated fortress as a result of enemy counterattacks and bombardments. Thus, the first and foremost function of the Fire Support Base was defensive. Troops, artillery, surveillance radars, and command centers all had to be dug into bunkers and fire trenches by nightfall of the first day. With the benefit of the on-site howitzers, the FSB could also deliver offensive fire, eliminating enemy firing sites or supporting friendly infantry operations. In fact, the fort offered such a degree of support and protection that ground maneuver was eventually hampered by the troop's reluctance to leave the comfort and safety of the FSB. With a description of the design, development and operational history of the Fire Support Base, this book provides the key to understanding one of the main assets of US battle strategy in the Vietnam War.

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Osprey - New Vanguard 41 - Angus Konstam - Confed erate Ironclad 1861-65 (2001).pdf

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Justin Fox - The Myth of the Rational Market, A Hi story of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street (2009).jpg

USA Books1 - Justin Fox - The Myth of the Rational Market, A Histo...ory of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street 2009.jpg

Chronicling the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox's The Myth of the Rational Market is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the perils and possibilities of risk. The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through the Great Depression and into the financial calamity of today. It's a tale that features professors who made and lost fortunes, battled fiercely over ideas, beat the house in blackjack, wrote bestselling books, and played major roles on the world stage. It's also a tale of Wall Street's evolution, the power of the market to generate wealth and wreak havoc, and free market capitalism's war with itself.

The efficient market hypothesis—long part of academic folklore but codified in the 1960s at the University of Chicago—has evolved into a powerful myth. It has been the maker and loser of fortunes, the driver of trillions of dollars, the inspiration for index funds and vast new derivatives markets, and the guidepost for thousands of careers. The theory holds that the market is always right, and that the decisions of millions of rational investors, all acting on information to outsmart one another, always provide the best judge of a stock's value. That myth is crumbling.

Celebrated journalist and columnist Fox introduces a new wave of economists and scholars who no longer teach that investors are rational or that the markets are always right. Many of them now agree with Yale professor Robert Shiller that the efficient markets theory represents one of the most remarkable errors in the history of economic thought. Today the theory has given way to counterintuitive hypotheses about human behavior, psychological models of decision making, and the irrationality of the markets. Investors overreact, underreact, and make irrational decisions based on imperfect data. In his landmark treatment of the history of the world's markets, Fox uncovers the new ideas that may come to drive the market in the century ahead.

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Olaf Gersemann - Cowboy Capitalism, European Myths , American Reality (2004).jpg

Europeans and many American pundits believe that while the U.S. economy may create more growth, Europeans have it better when it comes to job security and other factors. Olaf Gersemann, a German reporter who came to America, found the reality quite different. He checked facts and found the market freedoms in America create a more flexible, adaptable and prosperous system than the declining welfare states of old Europe.

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Olaf Gersemann - Cowboy Capitalism, European Myths , American Reality (2004).djvu

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William C. Meadows - Kiowa Ethnogeography (2009).jpg

Examining the place names, geographical knowledge, and cultural associations of the Kiowa from the earliest recorded sources to the present, Kiowa Ethnogeography is the most in-depth study of its kind in the realm of Plains Indian tribal analysis. Linking geography to political and social changes, William Meadows applies a chronological approach that demonstrates a cultural evolution within the Kiowa community.Preserved in both linguistic and cartographic forms, the concepts of place, homeland, intertribal sharing of land, religious practice, and other aspects of Kiowa life are clarified in detail. Native religious relationships to land (termed "geosacred" by the author) are carefully documented as well. Meadows also provides analysis of the only known extant Kiowa map of Black Goose, its unique pictographic place labels, and its relationship to reservation-era land policies. Additional coverage of rivers, lakes, and military forts makes this a remarkably comprehensive and illuminating guide.

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William C. Meadows - Kiowa Ethnogeography (2009).pdf

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Arlene S. Skolnick, Jerome H. Skolnick - World of Work in Transition, Growing Social Inequalities (2 008).jpg

Income inequalities have been growing significantly within countries over the past two decades or so. This new report presents a timely assessment of this issue, based on new data and economic analysis and with full technical annexes. It looks at the extent of this phenomenon and its sustainability, analysing factors at work and examining the extent to which it may worsen as a result of the ongoing food and financial crises. The report sheds light on the causes of 'excessive' inequality, and in particular the possible role of financial market deregulation. It also examines the extent to which traditional policies and institutions can still address excessive market-driven inequalities, and whether traditional redistribution systems are being eroded as a result of a general trend towards lower taxation on high incomes. In conclusion, the report considers policy reforms that could reduce the risk of rising "excessive" inequalities while at the same time maintaining economic dynamism.

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Arlene S. Skolnick, Jerome H. Skolnick - World of Work in Transition, Growing Social Inequalities (2 008).pdf

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David J. Wishart - An Unspeakable Sadnes, The Disp ossession of the Nebraska Indians (1995).jpg

Of all the interactions between American Indians and Euro-Americans, none was as fundamental as the acquisition of the indigenous peoplesa€™ lands. To Euro-Americans this takeover of lands was seen as a natural right, an evolution to a higher use; to American Indians the loss of homelands was a tragedy involving also a loss of subsistence, a loss of history, and a loss of identity.

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David J. Wishart - An Unspeakable Sadnes, The Disp ossession of the Nebraska Indians (1995).zip

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Osprey - New Vanguard 64 - Angus Konstam - Confede rate Raider 1861-65 (2003).pdf

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Walter Thabit - How East New York Became a Ghetto (2003).jpg

"Walter Thabit eloquently tells the story of East New York, a neighborhood in eastern Brooklyn, complementing his close observation of events in the neighborhood with astute analyses of the bearing of larger forces on this big city slum. Events in East New York reveal in microcosm the turbulent national forces that have determined the fate of inner city ghettos across the country over the past 40 years." --from the Foreword by Frances Fox PivenIn response to the riots of the mid-'60s, Walter Thabit was hired to work with the community of East New York to develop a plan for low- and moderate-income public housing. In the years that followed, he experienced first-hand the forces that had engineered East New York's dramatic decline and that continued to work against its successful revitalization. How East New York Became a Ghetto describes the shift of East New York from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to a largely black and Puerto Rican neighborhood and shows how the resulting racially biased policies caused the deterioration of this once flourishing area.

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Walter Thabit - How East New York Became a Ghetto (2003).pdf

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Howard J. Fuller - Clad in Iron, The American Civi l War and the Challenge of British Naval Power (20 07).jpg

This work addresses many persistent misconceptions of what the monitors were for, and why they failed in other roles associated with naval operations of the Civil War (such as the repulse at Charleston, April 7, 1863). Monitors were 'ironclads'- not fort-killers. Their ultimate success is to be measured not in terms of spearheading attacks on fortified Southern ports but in the quieter, much more profound, strategic deterrence of Lord Palmerston's ministry in London, and the British Royal Navy's potential intervention. The relatively unknown 'Cold War' of the American Civil War was a nevertheless crucial aspect of the survival, or not, of the United States in the mid 19th-century. Foreign intervention--explicitly in the form of British naval power--represented a far more serious threat to the success of the Union blockade, the safety of Yankee merchant shipping worldwide, and Union combined operations against the South than the Confederate States Navy.

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Howard J. Fuller - Clad in Iron, The American Civi l War and the Challenge of British Naval Power (20 07).pdf

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Michael A. Flannery - Civil War Pharmacy, A Histor y of Drugs, Drug Supply and Provision, and Therape utics for the Union and Confederacy (2004).pdf

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Thomas Reid - Spartan Band, Burnett's 13th Texas C avalry In The Civil War (2005).jpg

In Spartan Band (coined from a chaplain's eulogistic poem) author Thomas Reid traces the Civil War history of the 13th Texas Cavalry, a unit drawn from eleven counties in East Texas. The cavalry regiment organized in the spring of 1862 but was ordered to dismount once in Arkansas. The regiment gradually evolved into a tough, well-trained unit during action at Lake Providence, Fort De Russy, Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, and Jenkins' Ferry, as part of Maj. Gen. John G. Walker's Texas division in the Trans-Mississippi Department. Reid researched letters, documents, and diaries gleaned from more than one hundred descendants of the soldiers, answering many questions relating to their experiences and final resting places. He also includes detailed information on battle casualty figures, equipment issued to each company, slave ownership, wealth of officers, deaths due to disease, and the effects of conscription on the regiment's composition.

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Thomas Reid - Spartan Band, Burnett's 13th Texas C avalry In The Civil War (2005).pdf

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Dieter Plehwe, Bernhard Walpen, Gisela Neunhoffer - Neoliberal Hegemony, A Global Critique (2006).jpg

Neoliberalism is fast becoming the dominant ideology of our age, yet politicians, businessmen and academics rarely identify themselves with it and even political forces critical of it continue to carry out neoliberal policies around the globe. How can we make sense of this paradox? Who actually are “the neoliberals”? This book challenges simplistic understandings of neoliberalism. It underlines the variety of neoliberal schools of thought, the various approaches of its proponents in the fight for hegemony in research and policy development, political and communication efforts, and the well funded, well coordinated, and highly effective new types of knowledge organizations generated by the neoliberal movement: partisan think tanks.

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Dieter Plehwe, Bernhard Walpen, Gisela Neunhoffer - Neoliberal Hegemony, A Global Critique (2006).pdf

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Murray N. Rothbard - The Case Against the Fed (199 4).jpg

The Case Against the Fed is a book by Murray N. Rothbard criticizing the United State Federal Reserve, fractional reserve banking, and central banks in general. It details the history of fractional reserve banking and the influence that bankers have had on monetary policy over the last few centuries.

Rothbard claims that the notion that the Federal Reserve is designed to fight inflation is merely propaganda. He explains that since money supply inflation is only caused by an increase in the money supply, and only banks increase the money supply, then banks, including the Federal Reserve are the only source of money supply inflation. (Wikipedia.org)

The most powerful case against the American central bank ever written. This work begins with a mini-treatment of money and banking theory, and then plunges right in with the real history of the Federal Reserve System. Rothbard covers the struggle between competing elites and how they converged with the Fed.
Rothbard calls for the abolition of the central bank and a restoration of the gold standard. His popular treatment incorporates the best and most up-to-date scholarship on the Fed's origins and effects.

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Murray N. Rothbard - The Case Against the Fed (199 4).pdf

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Osprey - Warrior 126 - Ian MacPherson McCulloch - Highlander in the French-Indian War 1756-67 (2008).jpg

Colonial American historian Ian Macpherson McCulloch uses rare sources to bring to life the stirring story of the three Scottish Highland regiments that operated in North America during the French-Indian War. Forbidden to carry arms or wear the kilt unless they served the British King, many former Jacobite rebels joined the new Highland regiments raised in North America. Involved in some of the most bloody and desperate battles fought on the American continent, Highlanders successfully transformed their image from enemies of the crown to Imperial heroes, showing their bravery and determination at major battles like Ticonderoga and Quebec.

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George Pabis - Daily Life along the Mississippi (2 007).jpg

Review
“Writing for students and general readers, Pabis (history, Georgia Perimeter College) describes the daily life of people who lived and worked along the Mississippi River, from the era of Native American settlement to modern times. The volume addresses aspects of life from the mundane to external influences...”–SciTech Book News

Book Description

Rich thematic chapters explore the daily lives of Americans living along the Mississippi River, from pre-Columbian times to the present.

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George Pabis - Daily Life along the Mississippi (2 007).pdf

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Hilton L. Root - Alliance Curse. How America Lost the Third World (2008).jpg

In "Alliance Curse", Hilton Root illustrates that recent U.S. foreign policy is too often misguided, resulting in misdirected foreign aid and alliances that stunt political and economic development among partner regimes, leaving America on the wrong side of change. Many alliances with third world dictators, ostensibly of mutual benefit, reduce incentives to govern for prosperity and produce instead political and social instability and economic failure. Yet again, in the war on terror and in the name of preserving global stability, America is backing authoritarian regimes that practice repression and plunder. It is as if the cold war never ended.While espousing freedom and democracy, the U.S. contradicts itself by aiding governments that do not share those values. In addition to undercutting its own stated goal of promoting freedom, America makes the developing world even more wary of its intentions. Yes, the democracy we preach arouses aspirations and attracts immigrants, but those same individuals become our sternest critics; having learned to admire American values, they end up deploring U.S. policies toward their own countries. Long term U.S. security is jeopardized by a legacy of resentment and distrust. "Alliance Curse" proposes an analytical foundation for national security that challenges long-held assumptions about foreign affairs. It questions the wisdom of diplomacy that depends on questionable linkages or outdated suppositions. The end of the Soviet Union did not portend the demise of communism, for example. Democracy and socialism are not incompatible systems. Promoting democracy by linking it with free trade risks overemphasizing the latter goal at the expense of the former. The growing tendency to play China against India in an effort to retain American global supremacy will hamper relations with both--an intolerable situation in today's interdependent world. Root buttresses his analysis with case studies of American foreign policy toward developing countries (e.g., Vietnam), efforts at state building, and nations growing in importance, such as China. He concludes with a series of recommendations designed to close the gap between security and economic development

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